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Why Leonard Wood 



7 



ANOTHER LETTER 

to 
HIRAM FREEBORN 

{Privately Printed) 

New York 
March 15th, 1920 



^. 






Mem: In ansvjer to inquires, Hiram Freeborn still resides everywhere, all 
over the United States. Some thought he had moved aivay. This ivas an error. 
After persuading the Administration to declare war he also fought the ivar, 
financed the ivar, and despite the encumbrance of the Administration's office- 
holders, conducted the business end of the ivar. He also voted multitudinously in 
November, 1918, thereby doing all in his power to save Europe from the disasters 
(now occurring) with which it was threatened by its official adherence to our 
dreamy Administration. Owing to the seizure of the cables and the suppression 
of all information he was forced into seclusion while secret covenants were se- 
cretly arrived at. Upon the results thereof being made public he has emerged 
throughout the United States and is contending for the prevalence of American 
principles in contradistinction to the murky derangements of the moral senti- 
ments offered as panaceas for evils inherent to the existence of the human race. 
As heretofore he can be addressd at any Post Office in the United States. 



£/6/ 



01ft 

Antbor 
MAJI 13 IB2d 



New York, March 15th, 1920. 
Hiram Freeborn, Esq., 
United States of America. 
Dear Hiram: — 

Your question has gone too long unanswered. Like 
yourself I saw in the newspaper the letter published 
under the heading "Why Dr. Wood?" Why indeed Dr. 
Wood? Certainly not for any one particular reason. 
Certainly not because he is a member of that learned 
profession which guards the health of mankind. That 
is no reason for electing a man President of the United 
States. It was not unthoughtful, however, of the writer 
of that letter to label him with the title ''Dr/' for it 
brings to mind that the one affirmative objection, which 
the unthinking among his opponents would possibly urge 
against him, does not exist. It is said that there is a 
prejudice against electing a Regular Army Officer. To 
be sure when one comes to think of it Gen. Grant was a 
Regular Army Officer and so far as soldiers being Presi- 
dent is concerned Washington and Jackson, Harrison and 
four or five others had smelled powder. Indeed some of 
them, Washington for example, had been soldiers for long 
periods of time. Jefferson was not a soldier, he was 
pacific and got us into war by not being firm (other 
pacific people have on occasion done the same, in one 
country or another, according to history). Neverthe- 
less though not a Regular Army Officer Leonard Wood 
should not be elected President because he took care of 
the health of a certain number of American citizens 
and, later, of a troop of cavalry in the arid regions on 
service against Indian tribes in insurrection. Nor be- 
cause, when he found there was greater need for cavalry 
officers than for doctors, he resigned the one commission 
and undertook the greater duty of the other. Nor again 
because he performed his duties creditably under that 
new commission. Nor because he served in the Spanish 
War as the Colonel of Mr. Roosevelt's Rough Riders 
until he was made Governor of the Philippines. Nor be- 



cause he governed the Philippines successfully. Nor be- 
cause greater peace, prosperity and order came into 
being than had been deemed possible under the condi- 
tions that existed in those islands. Nor because while 
accomplishing this he earned the respect and confidence 
of a dozen or more barbarous tribes whose characteris- 
tics, interests and development, all varied the one from 
the other. Nor because for two years he governed Cuba. 
Nor because without the exercise of force or the taking 
of autocratic measures, peace and prosperity reigned in 
Cuba to a degree which the island had never known. 
Nor because he found the Cuban treasury empty and 
left it overflowing. Nor because this was done by economy 
and not through onerous taxation. Nor because the 
Cubans respected him and each other and discovered how 
to live and let live as peaceful citizens of a prosperous 
Republic. Nor because he foresaw that Germany would 
force us to war. Nor because he foresaw what would 
be our greatest need in war and had the wisdom and 
energy to create the military training camps. Nor be- 
cause it thereby became possible for us, when war came, 
to increase the size and multiply the number of officers' 
training camps while adhering to the plans he had put in 
operation, whereby we put into the field the most credit- 
ably officered, democratic army, that was ever raised and 
officered. Nor because he so trained a division that it 
was conceded that he had produced 40,000 soldiers. Nor 
because those 40,000 were disappointed by a jealous ad- 
ministration and not allowed to have their own general 
with them that they might do under his eye, that duty 
for which he had prepared them. Nor because he trained 
another 40,000 men so that the French and British in- 
spection officers, fresh from the trenches, spoke of them 
with admiration and said that they were trained to 
the minute and were an army : — and added that they 
had the most efficient working staff that had come under 
their notice in any American division. Nor because 
he is the only officer of the United States Army above 
the rank of Colonel who was wounded in the line of duty 
in France. Nor because he, with Elihu Root, Henry 
Cabot Lodge and Robert Bacon (now no longer with us) 
constituted the four close and intimate friends of Theo- 
dore . Roosevelt in whose judgment and opinion it is 
understood Mr. Roosevelt placed reliance. Nor because 
he is simple of habit and of plain and understandable 



speech. Nor because lie is of directness and clarity of 
thought. Nor because it is the testimony of those who 
have been in daily contact with him that he possesses an 
unvaried patience and self control. Nor because of the 
primary deduction which flows from what has been said 
concerning the two army divisions he had charge of. 
For it is but fair to say that no single individual can 
personally train 40,000 men at a time. He must have 
many associated with him in the work. Unless he has 
an innate capacity for the wise selection of associates 
and the capacity to imbue them with a spirit of enthus- 
iasm for the work, with a spirit of co-operation and with 
the ideal of loyalty to the enterprise, the result sought 
will not be attained. No qualities are more important 
in an executive than these. No one man can personally con- 
duct the affairs of one hundred and ten millions of 
people. He must have many associates. To succeed 
he must have this capacity for wisely selecting persons 
fitted for the work of conducting a sane government. 
He must have the capacity of imbuing them with a 
sense of loyal devotion to their duty. On his capacity 
to mould them into a real staff of associates and assist- 
ants depends the welfare of the land. The facts have 
demonstrated the existence of these qualities and capaci- 
ties in Leonard Wood. It is the secret of success in a 
Chief Executive. 

I might go on giving you a thousand more reasons 
for no single one of which should Leonard Wood be 
nominated as the Republican candidate at Chicago and 
elected President of the United States. The only ques- 
tion, should you ask it, that I cannot answer, w^ould be, 
whether possibly for all these reasons together (and some 
others) it might not be safest and sanest at this particu- 
lar conjuncture to both nominate and elect him. There 
is practically no doubt but that the Republican nominee 
will be elected, provided always, that he be sane and safe. 
A weariness has come over the land. We are tired of 
the unknown and the experimental. We shrink from 
further voyages into the fog-bound regions of national 
disruption. We distrust all autocrats of the lecture 
room. Even more are we tired of having old panaceas 
revamped and put forward as new solutions for the woes 
of humanity. Panaceas that have been tried out a dozen 
times in recorded history, and hundreds of times before 
in the non-recorded history of the human race. Panaceas 



which have been at times advanced in almost the same 
terms, and at times in terms that vary, but always with 
the same result, bitter disillusion at the end. Never yet 
has the world failed to pay the price when it has followed 
the vagaries of impractical idealism. Of idealism which 
leaves out of account the inherent human factors, which 
requires that it be presupposed that contrary to all human 
experience all men can and will, at the waving of a 
magic wand, become good. That requires that the in- 
stinct of self preservation — the trait which finds ex- 
pression in almost every action of the human being — 
shall be deemed to be eliminated from the human con- 
cept. Idealism which betrays when it does not kill. 

Not from the murky clouds of confused and deranged 
moral sentiments come peace and prosperity. They come, 
for a nation, from wisdom of administration and from 
the existence of simplicity of thought, plainness of speech, 
directness of intent, firmness of judgment, and resolute 
action when action is necessary. Neither will peace and 
prosperity come to these United States in this first quarter 
of the twentieth century if the chief executive be the 
representative of a faction within a political party, even 
though that faction temporarily dominate such party. 
The candidate of the Republican party must be a man 
who is not steeped in the prejudices of any faction within 
the party. You will have noticed that I assume that the 
Republican candidate will be our next President. It is 
because the United States of America is through with the 
Democrats — I had almost said forever. But not forever 
if the Republican party misbehave in office. The history 
of the last sixty years has been, that the people do not 
trust the Democratic party to govern the land, and only 
put it into power from time to time when the Republican 
party has committed itself to some faction within itself, 
in which necessarily the country as a whole has not 
confidence. For this reason, if for none other, the Re- 
publican nominee must be a man who will be the Presi- 
dent of the Nation not the leader of a wing of a Party. 
There is an underlying reason why the country recog- 
nizes the general incapacity of those who constitute the 
Democratic party to suitably perform the functions of 
government. That reason is experience. And there is 
a reason why the Democratic party is incompetent to 
govern. Men's minds, speaking of minds in the mass, can 
be divided along many lines of demarcation. One promi- 



iieiit line of demarcation is between "the practical" and 
"the idealistic." Not that practical men have not ideals, 
not that all idealists are utterly unpractical, but, speak- 
ing at large, the practical side tends to eliminate, or, its 
existence tends to negative, the existence of a preponder- 
ance of the ideal in a given mind. So also a preponderance 
of the idealistic in a given mind (as we all know in our 
daily experience) is largely incompatible with the exis- 
tence of any great amount of the practical in that mind 
or character. Here another human rule comes into play. 
Those who at large feel and think more or less alil^e tend 
to drift together, as well in political parties, as in social 
intercourse. Thence it follows that in one political party 
you will find a preponderance of idealism and idealists 
and in another a preponderance of the practical minded 
people. Need one argue that government is largely a 
practical question? That the supplying of the people with 
their daily food, the establishing of conditions which will 
lead to prosperity, the seeing to it that order prevails 
without necessity for the exercise of violence, the fore- 
seeing the future, the guarding against danger — the thou- 
sand things which constitute the art of government — fall 
more largely within the realm of the practical than within 
that of the ideal? How comes it that our merchants, 
our engineers, our railroad men, and all those who "keep 
the country going" are practical men, and that our col- 
lege professors, our clergymen, our directors of benevolent 
institutions and those who fill similar needs and uses 
are more or less idealists, if it be not true that the 
material side of life is confided by natural selection to 
the more practical rather than to the dreamers, and must 
so be if human life is to continue and to advance and if 
there is to be peace and prosperity instead of wild dis- 
order and confusion? The dreamer would, for example, 
have the people educated in art and beauty. But it 
is the practical man who founds the art museum and 
donates a million dollars to its upkeep. The dreamer 
has the vision and can be trusted to select the contents 
of the museum, but he cannot put the vision into execu- 
tion nor administer the fund which supports the museum. 
The material side of the enterprise would go to ruin 
under his management. The practical man has however, 
quite some vision or he would not be willing to supply 
the wherewithal to enable the idealist's hope to find its 
material expression. 



Governing a country and dreaming of an art museum 
are two wholly separate employments and the mind 
adapted to the latter is not fit for the first. In the 
Democratic party we find, by the operation of natural 
law, that there is a preponderance of theorists, of idealists, 
of dreamers. The names of the two parties are of no 
significance. They might be called "Party A" and "Party 
B." Whatever they were called you would find in the 
one a majority of "dreamers," in the other, a majority of 
those who accomplish. The Democratic party always 
needs a new law to remedy an old case. The Republican 
party always finds that some existing law covers the 
particular relation of one human being to another which 
arises. The Democratic party dreams and theorizes and 
has to be forced to act. The Republican party goes out 
and accomplishes. The Democratic party is unable to 
function when a crisis arises (unless the Republicans 
turn to and out of loyalty and good citizenship help it 
out). The Republican party on the other hand wel- 
comes a crisis as the average human being welcomes 
battle, with joy in the knowledge* that effort is required 
of it. All this must not be deemed mere criticism of the 
Democratic party — it is recital of well known fact. Nor 
is it sought to discriminate, favorably or unfavorably as 
to the one or the other of these two types of mind. Each 
type has its value and each its uses. Each has its de- 
fects and its inutilities. No one in his sober senses 
would expect to find a preponderance of persons of the 
strictly practical turn of mind among professors of 
moral philosophy. If it were so the moral philosophy 
which they would inculcate in "studious youth" might not 
be deemed the most desirable kind for the instruction of 
the young. On the other hand no one could reasonably 
expect that a preponderance of the executive heads of 
great business enterprises would be found to be dreaming 
idealists. If it were so our earnest sympathy would 
probably have to be extended to the stockholders. The 
country is merely a great business enterprise and all of 
us are stockholders therein and what is intended to be 
pointed out is that, speaking generally persons of similar 
mental type tend to group themselves together, and that 
the unpractical group is known among us as "Democrats,'^ 
also that unpractical people are not competent to ad- 
minister a government. It is for this underljdng reason 
that throughout history the conduct of the affairs of 



government is found generally in the hands of those who 
have a practical bent of mind. But it is also true that from 
time to time, if there arise an excess of the "practical" 
in their conduct of affairs through too long a continuance 
of their being entrusted with power, the practical-minded 
men grow hide-bound — what is called today "machine 
politicians" — and thereupon they are turned out of 
office, and the dreamers are put in. The dreamers invari- 
ably wreck the entire State beginning from the very 
instant that they are entrusted with power by their idiotic 
choice of unsuitable agents. In despair at their incom- 
petency, in horror at the interminable mess into which 
they get national affairs, the people turn to the now 
reproved and chastened "practical" party. In this 
country we have had seven awful years. No words can 
paint the insanity which has characterized the conduct 
of our public business. The people are dog-tired of it. 
The dreamers and idealists have, for the millionth time 
in the world's history, shown that they are unfit to govern. 
Only one thing could drive the people of the United 
States into continuing the Democratic party in power and 
that would be the capturing of the Republican Convention 
by some faction — whatever that faction was. You may 
mark my words if a faction prevail the cause is lost. The 
public has no use for either a "pacifist," or a "pussy- 
footer," or a "machine man" and the crime of nominating 
such a one should earn the vengeance of the gods. Millions 
will vote against any one of the three. The last Republi- 
can Convention, under considerable stress and strain, 
nominated a worthy man, but one who was so much of 
the type of what may be called "the better attributes" of 
his opponent that no reason appeared for making a 
change. Another such nomination by the Republican 
Convention will meet the same result. Or, should the 
Republican Convention nominate a man, however able 
or eminent in the party's councils, representing in his 
attributes a calculated reactionism, as surely as day fol- 
lows night he will go down to defeat; he will not com- 
mand the support of all the shades of opinion that con 
stitute the party and the land. The nominee must be a 
man in whom the nation as a whole has confidence. The 
politicians, of a stripe, might hug themselves in glee at a 
factitious success in the convention but they would find 
that they had earned the curses of the land when the votes 
were counted. 



10 



The Republican party must therefore nominate a man 
not alone of approved executive capacity, but one who 
corresponds to the demands of the day. Who has been 
in touch with leaders of sane progress. Whose mind is 
acquainted with and not blindly opposed to liberal views, 
who is neither a machine politician nor a pacitistic-ideal- 
ist nor a weakling, and who recognizes the business 
needs of the country and has the firmness to 
maintain them. Among the candidates Wood represents 
this need of the hour. Of him it cannot be said that he is 
steeped in commercialism. Nor that he is bound by golden 
chains to the chariot of capitalism. It cannot be said 
that he owes political allegiance to any mere group 
within the party. It cannot be said that he lacks either 
the ideals or the traditions of America and Americanism. 
Nor that he is subservient to the cunning demands of 
anarchy masquerading as liberalism. Nor that he has 
ever varied from his path to seek political advantage. Of 
him, however, it can be said that his ideals have ever been 
high, that his judgment of men has approved itself, that 
his firmness has never been distorted by obstinancy. 
That he comes by descent from a race of workers. That 
the petty vices of vanity, of love of power and of subser- 
vience to luxury are foreign to his being and his nature. 
That he has been tried out as the chief executive of 
two widel}'- separate countries, each presenting peculiarly 
difficult problems of its own, and has met an-d dealt with 
those problems successfully. That he is a natural leader 
of men. That he is both relied upon and reliable. There 
is no progressive Republican who would fear for the cause 
of progress by reason of his election. There is no working 
man who does not know that his rights would be pro- 
tected and fostered. There is no family man possessed of 
even the slightest amount of property — to stand between 
his family and the wolf at the door— that does not know 
that with him as President the anarchists who wish to 
take that property by violence will give it up as a bad job 
and turn to honest work instead of advocating murder 
and robbery for their own personal benefit. Nor is 
there any merchant, business man or manufacturer who 
would fear the destruction of his business through crime 
camouflaged as " liberalism." Nor the wrecking of both 
industry and labor for some preposterous dream. Nor is 
there anyone who would not know that decision in each 
instance would be on the merits of the question that 



11 



arose. Labor and capital are both fully conscious of the 
advantages of a straightforward, intelligent administra- 
tion of national affairs. Each of them needs the security 
and protection which arise therefrom. 

Reference has been made above to that trait of his char- 
acter known as patience. It is worth considering for 
few traits are more valuable in an executive. Indeed to 
success as an executive it is well nigh indispensable. We 
also know that in him, patience is coupled with firmness 
and we know that this also is indispensable to successful 
administration. 

Patience in an executive presupposes a hearing before 
decision, for an integral part of patience is the fair 
consideration of the merits of a controversy. It insures 
that error will not arise through ignorant haste and it 
imports freedom from hasty misjudgment of motives. 
Patience in an executive avoids unnecessary misunder- 
standings as well domestic as foreign. It eliminates 
the possibility of the angry mental attitude which arises 
from a feeling that representations have neither been 
entertained, considered nor understood. It is the anti- 
thesis of obstinancy and the handmaid of sane progress. 
If one were to add a palpable deduction to a great truth, 
it would be to say that there still abide in this world 
Faith, Hope and Charity, that the greatest of these is 
Charity, and that the outward and sane, expression of 
Charity is Patience. If you couple with it executive 
ability and the capacity to wisely select associates and 
assistants, and add directness and firmness of character, 
broad experience in government, self-control and energy, 
you have come very near finding the man of the hour. 

Let us then, to summarize, have a sane, and efficient 
Chief Executive that peace and prosperity arising from 
order and justice shall replace the pandemonium which 
has reigned for seven years. 

Yours, etc. 

CHAS. STEWART DAVISON. 



H 19 89 « 

















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